Blood of Tyrants. Logan Beirne
from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”22 But the fastidious delegates wanted to make some edits to Jefferson’s draft, so they did not adopt the Declaration of Independence until two days later. And hence, even though July 2 marked the day of the official vote for independence, July 4 stuck in the national consciousness as the United States’ birthday.
The nation was born into the jaws of an angry lion. The British were not as pleased with the Declaration of Independence as the Americans were. They saw it as outrageously treasonous and were determined to squash the rebellion. They invaded.
Howe’s troops landed in Brooklyn in the heat of late August 1776. He faced the scattered American force, which was little more than a mob, untrained and underequipped. Most had “nothing but a wretched farmer’s costume and a weapon.”23 In contrast, the British troops were well equipped and had five or six times as much military experience. Typically in their late twenties, they were about five years older on average than America’s army of “beardless boys.”24 The British promptly routed the Americans, sending them recoiling back to the banks of the East River. Here, lacking a navy, the Americans were trapped with no avenue of retreat. The Revolution was nearly ended right then, as Washington’s Continental Army stared in the face of annihilation.
In a fortuitous twist, the prevailing winds shifted. Unusually for August, a large storm brought strong northerly winds that made it impossible for Howe’s ships to sail up the East River. But Howe was patient, perhaps overly so. The British troops in Brooklyn set up camp for the night, fully confident that they would destroy Washington’s forces when the winds shifted again in the morning. The Americans hunkered down in their trenches, miserable in the pouring rain, dreading the inevitable bloodbath. Ominous booms of thunder mingled with those of British mortars in signaling the doom of the coming onslaught. Washington, with hardly any sleep in days, must have been gut-wrenchingly distressed by his army’s plight, but he did not show it. He maintained his outwardly cool composure and made his rounds to assess the situation. After much deliberation, he decided he had no option but to retreat.
In a bold maneuver, Washington ordered his men to commandeer every small ship they could find for a stealthy withdrawal across the river. But his plan quickly went awry when the sailors determined that the waters were too choppy to ferry the men and equipment across. And so the stoic general waited in Brooklyn, hoping for a break in the storm. When one of Washington’s officers reported that retreat would be impossible that night, all seemed lost. But in another bizarre turn of fate that many would later call divine intervention, the winds suddenly shifted at around eleven that night, allowing passage.
Washington rode his horse through the downcast camps, instructing his regiments on the clandestine mission. “All orders were given from officer to officer,” one soldier explained, “and communicated to the men in whispers.”25 The soldiers, “strictly enjoined not to speak, or even cough,” silently filed into the boats.26 Washington’s team of Massachusetts fishermen and sailors put their experience navigating New England’s perilous waters to amazing use, as the makeshift armada silently ferried thousands of men across the rough river all night.27 The howling winds and choppy seas masked the sounds of their escape from the unsuspecting British crouched in their trenches nearby.
But as the sun rose, Washington feared his time was up. He had left hundreds of his men at the front line so as not to alert the British to the withdrawal. These decoys had no backup nor any means of escape should the British pounce in the morning light. But in a final “peculiar providential occurrence . . . a very dense fog began to rise, and it seemed to settle in a peculiar manner over both encampments” in Brooklyn while miraculously leaving much of the river and Manhattan clear for the Americans to escape.28 Under this cover of fog, Washington remained in Brooklyn, fearlessly rounding up the last troops onto the boats. The fog lifted and the winds shifted later that morning, allowing the British ships to complete their trap. But they were too late: their prey had escaped.
Although Washington’s main force had slipped away, the British were not left empty-handed. From the Battle of Brooklyn and subsequent victories, Howe greedily collected thousands of captives. The British now had plenty of hapless American prisoners at their disposal, on whom they “took a most cruel revenge. Out of over 2600 prisoners taken on [one] day, in two months & four days 1900 were killed in the infamous sugar houses and other prisons in the city, [perishing] of hunger, cold, infection, and in some cases, actual poison.”29 This mass slaughter was overseen by a sadistic Loyalist named William Cunningham.
Howe appointed Captain Cunningham, a man “whose cruelty and wickedness [were] almost inconceivable,”30 to serve as provost marshal in command of Britain’s prisons in the area. Described as “a man of great physical powers, and of fine personal appearance,”31 Cunningham was placed in the post as a reward for his “blatant toryism.”32
This native of the Ninety-Six District in the backwoods of South Carolina possessed quite a vicious streak. A “scaw-banker” by trade, Cunningham had made his living by “enticing mechanics and rustics to ship to America, on promise of having their fortunes made in that country; and then by artful practices, produced their indentures as servants, in consequence of which on their arrival in America they were sold.”33 After his return from the seas, his “fiend-like disposition” only intensified. Once, upon receiving word that a man had insulted his elderly father, Cunningham walked nearly four hundred miles from Florida back home to South Carolina with a rifle on his shoulder and “his blood on fire.” Arriving at the offender’s house, Cunningham barged in and shot him in front of his own family. It was here that he “first tasted blood; and like the tiger, the taste created a thirst which could never be quenched.” Cunningham formed a band of merciless Tory “blood-hounds” who roamed the South, massacring any patriots they could find, even torturing those who had retired to civilian life.34
Once he was promoted to the command of the prison camps in New York City, “Bloody Bill” Cunningham’s cruelty and bloodlust knew no bounds. The tortures he inflicted on the American prisoners became infamous throughout the colonies.35 In order to “gratify his bloodthirsty instincts,”36 Cunningham made his captives suffer horribly. One such prisoner described finding himself “among the collection of the most wretched and disgusting looking objects that I ever beheld in human form . . . surrounded with the horrors of sickness, and death. Here thought I, must I linger . . . til death should terminate my sufferings.”37 And Cunningham was happy to assist with the dying part.
Bloody Bill openly confessed to being an accessory to thousands of murders as provost marshal, “both with and without orders from Government.” He admitted that “there were more than two thousand prisoners starved . . . by stopping their rations,” which he sold for his own profit.38 He used this ill-gotten profit to pay for the “drunken orgies that usually terminated his dinners.”39 For those prisoners who were able to subsist on the meager nourishment left over after Cunningham’s greed was satiated, many “fell victim to his murderous violence.”40
Cunningham’s “hatred of Americans found vent in torture by searing irons and secret scourges to those who fell under the ban of his displeasure.”41 Others “were hanged in the gloom of night without trial”42 while their “ferocious murderer” indulged in “the pleasure of hearing their shrieks of agony at the gallows.”43 The bodies were either buried in ditches or simply dumped into the harbor.
So grotesque were the accounts that Washington commissioned a special envoy to investigate their truthfulness. When questioned, Cunningham put his hands on his hips and “with great insolence answered every word was true.”44 Washington felt powerless to stop his countrymen’s suffering, and confided to his brother, “I am wearied almost to death with the retrograde Motions of things.”45 With the American cause on the brink of defeat, Washington lashed out.
He swiftly shot off a warning to General Howe:
I am again under the necessity of remonstrating to you upon the Treatment which our prisoners continue to receive in New York. Those, who have lately been sent